36 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
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Betting and consent
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There is an interesting thing around consent and betting:
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- Clueless people can't give fully informed consent around taking some bets I offer,
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- because if they were fully informed, they wouldn't make the bet, because they would know that I'm a few levels above them in terms of calibration and forecast accuracy.
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- But on the other hand, they can only acquire the "fully informed" state about their own bullshitting after losing the bet,
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- because once you lose money it is much harder to spin up rationalizations.
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This post was prompted by a few situations in the past:
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1. Offering a bet to a fellow forecaster at my forecasting group, [Samotsvety](https://samotsvety.org/) (I feel totally fine with this)
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2. Offering a bet to [Daniel Filan](https://danielfilan.com/bets)—someone I respect—where I think that he is overestimating something, and he feels that I am underestimating it (I feel totally fine with this)
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3. Offering a bet to someone I know is a much worse forecaster than I am who claims to be 99% sure of something (I do this occasionally)
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4. Offering to bet to someone who writes that ["I would bet all the money I have (literally not figuratively)"](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xBfp3HGapGycuSa6H/i-m-less-approving-of-the-ea-community-now-than-before-the?commentId=Gafn8GSkTge6q6ezf#Gafn8GSkTge6q6ezf) (I offered a specific bet, and would have gone through with the bet, even though loosing it would have been a major inconvenience to the person).
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- Incidentally, they later backed down, which I still can't get over.
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5. Offering a bet to a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory that Trump would not be reinstated after his 2020 loss, where I know the QAnon conspiracy theorist personally (I feel fine with this, have won a bit over 500 EUR)
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6. Taking a bet that Trump would not be reinstated as president in 2021 after Biden won, against nameless conspiracy theorists on Polymarket (have done this, feel fine)
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7. Offering to bet to someone who exhibited some symptoms of a manic episode (offered the bet, accepted the bet, then dissolved the bet once they lost)
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8. Offering to bet money to someone who had some symptoms of schizophrenia that they would not come up with a revolutionary math idea (considered the bet, but did not make it. I plausibly should have, since they keep believing in a similar thing three years afterwards.)
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So what I am saying to someone when I offer them a bet is:
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> I like you. However, I think what you just said is bullshit, or at least uncalibrated. And my reaction to that is to attempt to extract money from you in a way which I think will leave you with less money but with better models about the world and about your own fallibility. Now, it may be that I am wrong, in which case you can take advantage of me, but I think that this is the less likely outcome.
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I think that ultimately, I do feel generally fine making bets with people, even if I'm a bit conflicted. In particular, I think that being me being known to offer accurate probabilities as ellicited by bets is a useful thing to offer even to people in altered mental states. But in the past I've been hesitant to do that (see points 5 and 6 in the list above). In the future, I'll experiment with sending this post to people that I think are in a position like points 3-8 in the list, before I make a bet with them.
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I'm curious to get people's impressions on this. [Here](https://viewpoints.xyz/polls/betting-and-consent) is a small poll, and comments below are open.
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<p>
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<section id='isso-thread'>
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<noscript>Javascript needs to be activated to view comments.</noscript>
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</section>
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</p>
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